Red State Supreme Court Deals Blow To Republicans In Crucial Abortion Ballot Case

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled against Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s request to change the language of a proposed abortion amendment’s language Monday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An appeals court had ruled earlier this month that Ashcroft’s summaries of the amendment were “argumentative” and “politically partisan” because of his use of terms like “unborn child,” which the court considered “problematic.” Ashcroft appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court but the justices declined to hear his appeal, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“The courts’ repeated rejection of the Secretary of State’s arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians’ constitutional rights to gain the support and funding of special interest organizations to advance his political career,” Tom Bastian, communication’s director for the ACLU of Missouri, said in a prepared statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The proposed amendment language could range from creating a constitutional right to abortion up to 24 weeks or to not specifying a gestational limit on having the procedure, according to St. Louis Public Radio. Judge Thomas Chapman wrote in his opinion that the lower courts had been correct in their determination that Ashcroft’s language was “not fair and sufficient.”

“First, ‘right to life’ is a partisan political phrase in the same manner that ‘right to choose’ is a partisan political phrase … The use of the term ‘right to life’ is simply not an impartial term,” Chapman wrote.

Once the wording is set in stone, the amendment’s advocates have until May to gather 170,000 signatures in at least six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts in order to get the proposal on the ballot for next fall, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

Ashcroft’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.